Kuwait’s Islamic Constitutional Movement

Abstract

Kuwait’s Islamic Constitutional Movement (known as H ADAS according to the Arabic acronym for al-hamka al-dusturiyya al-islamiyya) integrated as a normal political actor more than any other Islamist group in the Arab world has. In 2008, at a time when Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leaders were dragged before military courts, Hamas parliamentary deputies languished in Israeli prisons and Jordan’s Islamic Action Front veered toward confrontation with the government, Kuwait’s HADASdescended like these other movements from a local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood—prepared hopefully for its second parliamentary election campaign in two years. HADAS sent ministers to the government, negotiated with other parliamentary blocs, and ran the most sophisticated election campaigns that Kuwait has witnessed. Indeed, HADAS’s strong party machinery is unusual not only in Arab terms but also is a marked contrast to its rivals in the Kuwaiti political spectrum, all of which are still composed of a collection of prominent personalities with at best a rudimentary organization to back them.